


The Robin Manual

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Bruce Needs a Hug, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 19:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14576145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Bad days were nothing new.Most of the time, he could feel them coming the way a swimmer could feel the approach of something huge beneath the surface of the water. The pressure would start to build, tugging at him like undertow by the shore, and it was always a gamble to see how long he could tarry before the pull yanked him under.





	The Robin Manual

Bruce Wayne was having a very bad day that unfortunately had been preceded by a very good week.

Bad days were nothing new. They came in different flavors and depths, varying in degrees to shade the background of his life with daguerrotype mottling. He’d had them for as long as he could remember and could chart the course of his life by their frequency and intensity. At least for the most part.

Most of the time, he could feel them coming the way a swimmer could feel the approach of something huge beneath the surface of the water. The pressure would start to build, tugging at him like undertow by the shore, and it was always a gamble to see how long he could tarry before the pull yanked him under.

The bad days were especially bad before Dick. Bruce had been the Bat of Gotham for months and every night of patrol felt like he was slamming his head against a steel-plated wall. He would clean up the streets, only to see them fill up again with drugs and guns. He would put his life on the line to catch criminals, only to catch the same people a week later. As Bruce Wayne, he charmed and cajoled and raised funds and awareness. As the Bat, he worked and fought and bled. And nothing changed.

And if nothing changed, why do anything at all?

On the very bad days, Bruce wouldn’t get out of bed. He _couldn’t_ get out of bed. Instead of rising mid-morning, sore from a long night’s patrol and grumbling bear-like for his breakfast, Bruce would stay in his room with his curtains drawn. He would lay on his stomach, arm dangling like a marionette limb over the side of the bed, fingertips nearly grazing the rug. And so he would remain.

He would sleep but never dream. Sometimes he would watch the shifting shadows in the corner of his room and wonder if he could step through them into a world where he didn’t exist. Most of the time, he didn’t wonder about anything at all. Instead, he would float untied to the physical world and kept in place only by the sullen lump of clay that he called a body.

On those very bad days, Bruce’s head was smog and cobwebs, but he remained painfully aware that he was a ghost floating inside a sack of bones. If he breathed too deeply, he might float away. If he moved, his very skin might crack and set him loose. But moving was too impossible to consider and required strength he would never have.

So he would lay in the dark, sometimes feeling like he was suspended in amber, sometimes panting and fighting a heart that felt like it would batter its way through his ribs and out of his chest. And then eventually, after hours and hours, Alfred would come and drag him out of bed. 

Shove him into the shower and rub warmth into his arms and legs. 

Wrap him in clothes and shovel food down his throat. 

A long time later, Bruce would return to himself, mind and body prickling painfully like a limb with its circulation returned, but it would be days still before anything felt close to normal. He would still feel empty. Detached. And just... not enough.

Then Dick Grayson had come into his life. Bright, irrepressible Dick, who despite all he’d been through shone so fiercely with life that sometimes it hurt to look at him. Days with Dick meant chatter and laughter and so many questions that Bruce’s tongue felt like shoe leather by the end. He loved every minute.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have bad days with Dick around. He still did. They were his lifelong companion, even back when he had a mother and a father and the unshakeable conviction that the world was a safe, just place. But Dick was a distraction. Dick was a hope. He was proof that even if nothing else Bruce did mattered, his life still meant something in the unending weave of the world. Because _he_ , Bruce Wayne, was important to this child, he mattered, and it was almost enough to keep his chin above the waves.

Dick was also the one to stumble across a way to ease some of the black out of the worst days. Several months after Dick officially became Bruce’s ward, Bruce had come home from patrol and tumbled deep into a bad day. He had gone an age without a bad day, and it almost had been a relief to let his aches meld into one full-body hurt and then fade into bodily white noise. To let his thoughts grow so loud that they felt like they were coming from someone else and he could pull free.

He found out later that he had been in bed for the full day when Dick slipped away from Alfred’s watchful eye and into Bruce’s room. Bruce hadn’t heard the door creak open, or the soft patter of Dick’s feet across the rug, or Dick’s whispered, “Bruce?”

Only when a small hand shook his shoulder did one eyelid float open, the pupil beneath unfocused and hazy. But it had been enough for Dick.

“Bruce, I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you?” No answer came, and a tiny sob had risen from Dick’s lips only to be stifled by the heavy dark of the room.

Bruce had known he was needed, and usually that was enough to allow a chink through which he could pry himself free. But it had been as if months of deferred bad days had coalesced and fallen on him at once, like the crashing head of a tsunami wave. He was sinking into the abyss, drowning in the deep, and Dick’s voice had barely reached him above the rushing in his ears.

“Bruce, please.” Dick reached out and grasped Bruce’s dangling hand, only to gasp and clutch Bruce’s limp fingers tightly in his. “Gosh, Bruce, you’re freezing. Your fingers are like popsicles.”

A pause, and then, “Alfred said you weren’t feeling great. Are you sick?”

A small palm had pressed to Bruce’s forehead, then his cheek. “Y’don’t feel hot. Your eyes don’t look so good, though.”

The eyes in question disappeared as Bruce’s eyelids fluttered close again, but Dick had not been deterred. The nightmare seemed forgotten, at least for the moment. Or maybe the clever little bird had seen a way to fix two problems at once. “Don’t you worry, Bruce. I’ll take care of you.” 

Bruce, deep in his abyss, hadn’t paid any heed to Dick’s ministrations or his whispered chatter. Glasses of water on bedsides didn’t mean anything on a bad day, nor did warm blankets or dangling arms lifted and tucked under covers. His body was not his. It was a concrete cage, trapping the beating moth wings in his chest, the smoke of his brain.

And then, very carefully, a small body had climbed onto his back and lay down. “Is this okay, Bruce?” came the breathy whisper. “I get cold when I’m scared, and you’re cold, and my dad... It was okay with him.”

When Bruce didn’t complain, Dick tugged the covers up to his neck and nestled his cheek between Bruce’s shoulder blades. “G’night, Bruce. Hope you feel better.”

And, strangely, he did. The change hadn’t been instantaneous, but the weight on Bruce’s back had grounded him, the warmth of the sleeping boy slowly warming his own body until he could float back to the surface. Inch by inch, Bruce’s skin began to thaw. Breath by breath, his mind returned to him. Moment by moment, the fluttering moth in his chest slowed and settled into a normal heart. Instead of fighting through the prickling pain of returning to reality, he sank again, as if into a warm, still bath, and slept.

Guardian and ward never discussed that night. Bruce never confided in Dick about his bad days or how Dick’s presence had helped him through one. But when, after days or weeks or months, Bruce would tumble down the rabbit hole again, he would invariably wake to find Dick sleeping on his back, or pressed to his chest, or, once the boy was taller and heavier, curled against his side.

The years passed. The number of Wayne Manor residents expanded. Gotham required more. Its villains multiplied, diversified their tactics, took more from him. The demands on Bruce Wayne, on Batman, grew. Dick was gone, grown beyond the Manor and the Robin mantle and the need to guide Bruce out of the abyss. 

So Bruce forced himself up. He couldn’t risk sinking, couldn’t risk losing himself, even for a day. He forced himself up and through his bad days, his mind fathoms away but his body up, moving, fighting, protecting. It felt like trying to walk on a broken foot, each step grinding shattered bones further into dust. But he did it, because he had to.

And then came the very bad day in the very good week. Gotham was at peace, or as close to peace as a place like Gotham City could achieve. Arkham was quiet. The streets were settled. Even the weather was nice. Patrol had ended at a decent time every night. Bruce’s kids were well, happy, and independent. Though still young, Damian was preternaturally self-sufficient, and the rest of the team were old enough to handle themselves. There was nothing demanding Bruce’s time or attention.

So when the bad day crested over top of him and dragged him down, it did so with a ferocity that surprised Bruce even after a lifetime of familiarity, and he was left without a rope to pull himself back up.

He wasn’t needed. The world could spin on without him. He knew, logically, that his lack of demand was a good thing, that it meant he had done his job well and right and he should feel good about it. But all he felt was tired. Empty. Entire civilizations could rise and fall around him, and he would remain where he was, gathering dust. Trapped with his frantic moth-wing heart and thoughts that circled and circled but never landed. He was too tired even to cry.

“Father.”

Bruce didn’t know how long he had drifted until he bumped against the reef of that voice. Skeletal fingers scrabbled at its edges, trying to hold fast before he could float away again. His kids needed him. There was an emergency. A case. He needed to pull himself up onto those shattered bones and stride back into the fight.

He opened one eye and struggled to focus on his son. The boy’s form wavered in and out, his mouth out of sync with the words that warbled in the air. But when the boy sighed and hefted himself onto the bed, Bruce was present just enough to feel relief deep in his chest. His anchor was here. And so, with the warmth and weight of love pressing on his spine, he slept.

When Bruce woke some time later, he remembered to twist slowly and grab the child on his back before turning over completely. With a quiet, sleepy grunt, he settled the groggy boy onto his chest and tousled his dark hair. It was such an exact match to a scene that had played time and again that Bruce nearly jolted when the boy lifted his face and he saw it was Damian instead of Dick.

_Of course. Of course. Dick is... gone. Grown._

Still, this wasn’t the child he would have expected to indulge in some late-night cuddling.

“Damian?” Bruce rasped, surprised to find that his mouth still worked. “D’dju have a nightmare?”

Damian snorted, his young brow creasing as he shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Father.”

They both knew it wasn’t that ridiculous, but Bruce let it pass for the sake of his son’s pride and in order to follow the mystery. “Then why...”

Groggy though he was, Bruce instantly wanted to reach out and snatch the question back. Knowing Damian, the boy would immediately grow stiff and defensive and leave. And Bruce didn’t _want_ him to leave.

But to his surprise, Damian didn’t leave, though he did flush uncomfortably bright. “I’m following instructions.”

Bruce tried to speak again, but grimaced as his parched throat seized, making his chest quake with hacking coughs. Damian did move then, but only to stretch his hand to the bedside table for the waiting glass of water, which he handed to Bruce.

Bruce drank the entire glass, sighing with relief when he was finished. “Thank you,” he whispered, not willing to risk another fit. “What instructions?” Even as he asked, he settled back against his pillows and tugged the covers up over the both of them.

“From the others. For your bad days,” Damian replied, his own voice equally quiet. “It’s in the manual.”

The last word was slurred by a yawn, but Bruce managed to catch it. Gently, he rested his palm against the back of his son’s head and guided it down to rest on his chest again. Despite the good week, the whole family had been working too hard lately. They had earned some rest.

“Manual?” Bruce asked as he rubbed his thumb against Damian’s scalp.

“Yes.” There was a pause for another yawn. “The Robin manual. For taking care of Batman. Everyone’s added something.”

This was news to Bruce. But it was information he could explore for another time. He could already feel his son’s breathing deepening beneath the hand on his back and Bruce’s own consciousness was slipping back into the cradle of sleep. Craning his neck, he kissed the boy’s hair, then settled back with a deep, rumbling sigh.

“Goodnight, Robin.”

“Goodnight, Batman.”

**Author's Note:**

> First: Bruce Wayne is a fictional character in a canon universe run by creators who seem to have a vendetta against proper therapy. However, dear reader, you do not, so if you find yourself relating to Bruce and his bad days, please talk to someone. You might not have a Robin, but you don't have to hobble along on your own.
> 
> Second: This is not a fic written from experience, so if I've botched something horribly, please tell me. 
> 
> Third: I was inspired by the fanon that Bruce's super-heavy cape acts like a weighted blanket to help with his anxiety. I started wondering what that might look like outside of the cowl, and it seemed a pretty easy assumption to make that our boy could have some issues with depression, too. It is also my personal belief that my precious son is pretty dang touch-starved, but that's an issue for another fic. Literally. As in, I wrote this fic while working through a writer's block on that other fic. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
